


Another Life

by nightingaelic



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Heavy Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-11-02 07:36:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20670131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightingaelic/pseuds/nightingaelic
Summary: When the Courier makes a move on Boone, he's not sure how to react. To tell the truth, he's not sure if it's what he wants.





	Another Life

**Author's Note:**

> Basically, this is the first of a bunch of writing challenges set to me by my good friend who is also a fic writer. Her prompt was to listen to the song "Another Life" by Motionless in White, and then write a fic inspired by it. This fic is set near the end, and post-game end, of Fallout: New Vegas, where the Courier chooses to keep the city independent.

“Do you remember what you said to me, that night you popped Jeannie May Crawford’s head like a melon?” she asked. “After I gave you back your beret?” 

“Not really,” Boone grumbled. “You asked me to come with you. Didn’t think much about it, just said yes.” 

“You said it wasn’t gonna end well,” Fox said, signaling the securitron behind the bar for another drink. The robot set itself to mixing, awkward in the delicate task better suited for a Mister Handy, or maybe even a protectron. Eventually it produced a glass of bubbly red liquid. The Courier regarded the concoction critically before swallowing a fraction of it. 

“Did it really end that badly?” she asked. 

“You tell me.” 

“I’m asking _ you,” _ Fox countered. “This isn’t about me. It’s never been about me. Tell me what _ you _ think.” 

“Oh, it’s not about you?” Boone gestured at the cocktail lounge around them. “Don’t think we’d be sitting here, sipping a dead tycoon’s liquor, about to secure Hoover Dam if it weren’t for you.” 

She bristled like he knew she would, and he cracked the corner of his mouth into a rare smirk. “Relax. I’m messing with you. That’s what snipers and spotters do.” 

_ “You-” _ Fox glared at him, then sank back an inch, tapping her nails on the counter next to her drink. “I still want an answer, Boone.” 

He sighed, tilted his own glass around to catch the fading light coming in through the glass windows that encircled the bar. “Way I see it, it’s not over yet,” he said finally. “You’re asking me too soon.” 

“Mmm.” Fox shook her head. “Today, tonight- this is the end. Tomorrow’s the beginning. Calm before the storm, or whatever.” 

He eyed her suspiciously. “You’re planning on surviving tomorrow’s shitstorm?” 

She met his eye, defiant. “I am. Are you?” 

Boone shrugged. “Don’t know. It’s like I said, way back when. This was only ever going to play out one way. All I can do is wait for it to be done with me.” 

Fox reached up and yanked the tie out of her hair, letting it fall in a dark wave around her shoulders. Boone had grown used to seeing it wild, greasy, tied back and dusty from the desert, but tonight she had taken her time in the Lucky 38’s presidential suite shower and given it the attention it usually lacked. The ends were still damp, dripping in places, and the feathered edges drew wet lines around her tanned shoulders and the straps of her tank top. 

“I’m not done with you,” she said bluntly. 

Her eyes were dark, heavy, like stones thrown into Lake Mead and left to sink beyond where the sun could reach. Everything about her was dark, suddenly. Her silhouette against the sunset in the casino’s windows, the faded stains on her favorite pair of jeans, the way she was looking at him. Fox was a hole in his world, and he could feel himself falling in. 

The Courier’s fingers drifted across the bar toward his, and he didn’t pull back, not right away. There was nothing but a breath between them, the smallest of divides, when the feeling in his chest became too familiar and his mind spilled a brighter face, figure, over the woman in front of him, like a photo negative. 

Boone pulled back. Fox stopped her advance, lips slightly parted, eyes concerned. Those eyes steeled while he caught his breath, and in an instant she was walking away, red drink left to sparkle in the fading light. 

He tipped his stool over in his haste to follow her. Hand on her shoulder, spinning around to block her exit. “Wait.” 

Fox shook her head. “No. I’m done waiting, but you’re not. It’s fine.” 

“Fox, I’m not-” 

“You know I can _ see _ it, right?” she cut him off. “See _ her. _ You get this look on your face, like… like… I don’t know. I just know that if you still have that look, you’re not seeing _ me _ when you look at me.” 

He let her shoulder go. “What do you want from me? I had a wife. She’s dead. You know what it did to me.” 

“God, Boone, I know. Better than anyone in this whole damn city, this whole goddamn _ desert.” _ She raked her fingers through her hair, pushed back over her head. “But don’t try to pretend you haven’t been thinking about it- about us. Snipers and spotters watch each other’s backs, yeah, but you’ve been watching a bit more than my back lately.” 

Boone didn’t deny it. Didn’t say anything. Just stared at her, hard, and she stared back. 

“Do you want me or not?” Fox asked. Low voice, guarded tone, defensive enough almost to the point of viciousness. 

He didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. Couldn’t summon the words. Slowly, he took a step back, out of her path. 

Fox fixed him once more in her dark gaze. Less defensive, more disappointed. “You don’t have to do this alone, you know,” she said. 

Boone looked away, and she was gone. 

* * *

She danced in his scope the next morning, her song the distant thump as she fired slug after slug into Legion bodies that fell like trees around her. He watched as she moved forward along the wall of the dam, spilling blood and shells over its walls in a waterfall of violence. The Courier hardly wavered when the dread Legate Lanius showed his face, clad in his shining mask and armor. The mask ran red by the time she was done, and she pulled the Blade of the East from the stiffening hands of the Legion’s deadliest man. Her own face was red with blood, her eyes and lips resolute. 

Boone’s heart leapt for her, his own resolve as sharp as the sword she slung over her back as a trophy. Her allies from the Strip, the desert wastes, the bunker beneath the nearby fort, spun around her like a dust storm, grains of sand rising up to wipe away the rust of the Legion that threatened to consume New Vegas and its people. He was among them, and he was alive. 

Though he was hardly surprised when she turned away the NCR troops led by General Lee Oliver, Boone’s demeanor clouded at the sight of the men he had once served with forced to abandon the position they had held for so long. The securitrons of New Vegas oversaw their departure silently, with no words of comfort or disdain for the men and women who snaked off toward the west with their tails between their legs. 

The Courier walked among them, as silent as her mechanical forces. The blood on her face was hardening, cracking around the edges, thick in her hair and dark on her combat armor. Death incarnate, left to view the destruction in her wake. 

When she caught sight of Boone in the crowd, she paused her conversation with the securitron wearing a stupid smiley face and made her way over. 

“You survived,” she said. 

Boone fished a handkerchief out of a pocket and handed it over. “Looks like it.” 

Blood scraped away onto the cloth from Fox’s face and fingers. Enough remained to swirl like a red hurricane against her tan features. “Now what?” she asked. 

He shrugged. “Can’t say.” 

It wasn’t the answer she wanted, but it was the answer he had. 

* * *

She got busier, after that. There was always work in New Vegas, for those looking, but for Fox, New Vegas _ was _the work. With the help of the securitrons and the families of the Strip, whatever seeds of rebellion might have been sown from New Vegas becoming independent were uprooted and disposed of. People returned to gambling, whoring, betting on everything from cards to contests to mole rat races. Business went on as usual. 

Boone watched progress- at least, he _ thought _ it was progress- go by. Sometimes from the cocktail lounge at the top of the Lucky 38, sometimes from the bar at the Atomic Wrangler or the pavement on the boulevard. Sometimes with one of the Courier’s other compatriots, the girl with the cowboy hat and the sad eyes, the ghoul with a mouth full of Spanish curse words or the cyberdog that whined softly when it smelled a cooking fire in the distance. When he was feeling nostalgic, Boone would walk through the former NCR embassy, which emptied slowly as Fox’s control of the area tightened. 

On rare occasions, he’d run into her out in the world. Arguing with the doctors at the old Mormon fort about refugee influxes. Sharing a cigarette with the King in the streets of Freeside. Haggling with street vendors over roasted pinyon nuts. 

Once he caught her preparing for a shower at the Lucky 38 presidential suite, wearing nothing but a robe while she picked at a row of stitches down the side of her leg. When she realized he was watching her, she paused, hand supporting the underside of her knee, before drawing the robe in closer and disappearing into the bathroom. Boone stared at the place she had been for a minute before taking the elevator down to the casino and opening a bottle of bourbon. 

They didn’t speak, barely looked in the other’s direction, just circled around like wild dogs sizing each other up. Boone wondered what would happen if he packed his things, hit the road for Novac, left the Mojave altogether. If the Courier could do it, could disappear to Zion or the Divide without so much as a goodbye, why couldn’t he? 

He tried, that night, to fade away. Couldn’t do it. Pack was too heavy, shoes were too tight, rifle wasn’t in tip-top condition. 

He tried the next night, but still couldn’t bring himself to leave the city limits. It looked like it might storm, and storms brought out the wasteland creatures when they ended. When he collapsed in the bed she had given him in the Lucky 38 well after midnight, it was Fox he saw twisting in his dreams, bringing death to everything she touched. 

“You can’t leave,” the Mexican ghoul said the next day over drinks at the Tops. _ “La Zorra _ has you tied up in her penthouse, _ amigo.” _

Boone didn’t argue. Even if he didn’t have his hands cuffed, his legs roped to bedposts or a slave collar around his neck, he knew the ghoul was speaking the truth. 

Fox made a fearsome opponent, a formidable wasteland ruler, a beautiful captor, and Boone found himself resenting her for it. In a way, the vision of the woman he used to love that had flashed over her face the night before the battle at Hoover Dam was the best description he had of Courier Six, for anyone who might have asked. Fox was the photo negative of Carla. Where Carla had been light, blonde and fair and soft in ways only he had discovered, Fox was the exact opposite. He couldn’t look at her without seeing what he had lost, the ways the differences led into each other like the shadow of the moon eclipsing the sun. His thoughts, his emotions got tangled up, and even though Boone had never been a talkative man, the internal struggle left him feeling tongue-tied. 

“Why am I here?” he finally asked her, the next time she stepped off the elevator into the presidential suite they were barely sharing. 

She merely shrugged, the way he always did, and turned toward her room. 

It wasn’t enough of an answer, and Boone grabbed her by the shoulders and shoved her up against the wall, something he had never done to Carla. He was angry, yes, but more than that, he was helpless. “Tell me,” he demanded. 

Fox didn’t even stiffen, just waved the securitron on the elevator off when it unfolded its weapons array to defend the casino’s owner. She looked up at him with those dark eyes, full of sorrow and longing and pity. 

“You’re not done with me,” she said, turning her own words back on herself. 

Barely a breath between them, the smallest of divides, and yet he couldn’t fathom a way across. He let her go, and he left for Novac that night. 

* * *

Watching the desert from the mouth of an ancient lizard was boring work, but it was work, and it kept Boone occupied. Nights flew by, with Legion stragglers punctuating the tedious stretches every so often, and it felt good to put bullets in their heads until they stopped coming. 

From his perch in the dinosaur, Boone could see the stars peppering the sky, scattered around the moon but fading beneath the lights of the New Vegas Strip in the distance. News of the city’s leader came and went, rumors blowing like tumbleweed with the caravans. Wrested control of Gomorrah from the Omegas. Took a husband from among the Kings. Lost some fingers in a gamble gone wrong. Ran off with a girl from the Brotherhood of Steel. Boone believed all and none of them, in turn. The truth was, he could see Fox doing anything she liked, having anyone she wanted, something he’d never imagined himself doing. The Courier still danced in his dreams, but the death that had always surrounded her began to wane- instead, he saw her as he had first known her, uneasy smile, mismatched boots, dark hair shaved down on one side over the bullet wounds that had disrupted her life. 

Disrupted, or defined?

They were familiar wounds, to the sniper who had inflicted similar ones to countless, nameless faces, faces that wouldn’t leave him. Never up close, always from a distance, but just as devastating. The only difference was that while his victims never rose, she defied the man who shot her and got up again. 

Why did Fox get up again?

Why couldn’t Carla have gotten up again? 

Had Fox disrupted his life, or defined it?

Questions that left Boone tongue-tied, too. 

* * *

When standing watch over Novac became too dull, Boone found work with a caravan that passed through the town between the Strip and Goodsprings. Walking the road gave him back something he had been craving, and he smiled a little more when the caravan hands got to telling jokes and tall tales. Not much, but more. 

On one of the caravan’s trips into New Vegas, he spotted her. Her hair was longer, tied back in a cascade over her button-up shirt. The sword was still on her back, slung between her two shotguns and a mess of leather armor over those jeans of hers. She was _ still _wearing those jeans. 

Boone didn’t draw attention to himself, and the Courier disappeared into a Freeside alley after tossing a cactus fruit at one of the beggars on the street. He followed her at a distance, watching as she dodged around broken glass and puddles. 

When she turned a corner, he sped up so as not to lose her, and rounded it to find her standing in his way, arms crossed. He skidded to a halt, a hair closer than felt comfortable. 

“Boone,” she said. 

“Courier.” 

“Something you’re looking for?” 

Was there? Boone didn’t know, anymore than he had known why he had stayed at the Lucky 38 for so long. 

When he didn’t have an answer, Fox sighed and put a hand to her forehead. “Don’t scare me like that. There are still people who want me dead in alleys like this.” 

“If I wanted you dead, you’d never-” 

“Yeah, I know.” She waved his words off. “I’d never see you coming, sniper.” 

She crossed her arms again and looked him up and down. “You look good. Better.” 

“Fox,” he muttered, scratching the back of his neck uncomfortably. “I’m… I’m sorry.” 

Confusion on her face, then realization. “Don’t be. You weren’t ready, and neither… neither was I.” 

“It wasn’t you,” he tried to reassure her, but she wasn’t hearing it. She stepped forward, planted a finger on his chest, looked up into his eyes. 

“Don’t do this unless you want to,” she said quietly. 

He picked her up, fumbled around the leather straps that held her weapons, pressed her into the bricks of the nearest wall. 

“I’m not done with you,” he muttered, and kissed her. 


End file.
